Scottish Government Prevention Unit: Areas of Shared Interest

Area of Shared Interest 1 – Investing in Prevention

Introduction

This area of interest focuses on prevention investment, including preventative budgeting, innovative funding mechanisms, investment frameworks, and the analytical infrastructure required to measure impact, demonstrate value and encourage sustained investment in prevention.

Preventative investment is concerned with how resources can be directed towards actions that improve outcomes through reducing the likelihood of future harm, rather than solely responding to problems once they have occurred. This reflects a growing recognition that many of the challenges to outcomes and public services are driven by factors that emerge and accumulate over time, and that earlier intervention can improve outcomes for individuals while reducing future demand on services.

As pressures on public services continue, and the knock on impacts on outcomes increase, there is growing interest in how evidence, data and evaluation can be used to support investment decisions. This includes understanding the social and economic value of prevention, identifying opportunities to shift resources towards earlier action, and ensuring that investment approaches recognise the contribution of communities, the third sector, the private sector and public services in delivering preventative outcomes.

Why we are interested in the topic

The Scottish Government already invests a substantial proportion of public spending in activities that contribute to prevention. However, the Public Service Reform Strategy highlights the need to strengthen investment in upstream and preventative approaches to improve outcomes, reduce future demand pressures and support long-term fiscal sustainability.

The Prevention Unit leads delivery of the Prevention Pillar within the Public Service Reform Strategy, including the development of a preventative budgeting approach to better understand and monitor investment in prevention across Scotland. The Programme for Government 2026 to 2031 has taken this further through the proposed Scottish Prevention Investment Framework, which will establish a consistent approach to assessing, prioritising and evidencing preventative investment. By strengthening the analytical and decision-making infrastructure for prevention, the framework aims to support investment in interventions that deliver long-term social and fiscal benefits while reducing future pressures on public services.

More broadly, there are examples of funding mechanisms locally, which are developing innovative approaches to investing in prevention. This includes:

• Edinburgh Regenerative Futures Fund - a £15 million, ten-year, community-led investment initiative for Edinburgh that pools philanthropic and public resources to tackle the root causes of poverty, racism and environmental challenges.
• Clackmannanshire Transformation Space - The Clackmannanshire Transformation Space is a community-led funding and governance model that pools resources across sectors and places citizens at the centre of decisions about prevention investment.
• East Ayrshire Prevention Budget - East Ayrshire Council has committed £40 million over the next ten years to support early intervention and prevention initiatives. This fund aims to tackle poverty, particularly child poverty, and increase fairness within the community.

Existing work in this area

There has been a significant growth in interest and output on preventative investment and investment in recent years across Scotland and internationally.

Through leadership of the Public Service Reform Strategy Prevention Pillar, the Prevention Unit developed a Preventative Budgeting Tool, which supports users both in Scottish Government and externally to tag preventative spend in budgets. This was tested through a pilot programme published in June 2026, with plans to expand the budget tagging across the full Scottish Budget. The Unit is also supporting use of the tool amongst partners, including local authorities and NHS Boards.

There are also a number of other organisations who have produced outputs on preventative budgeting and investment. This includes:

• Carnegie UK – their paper Budgeting for Wellbeing explores how budgeting systems can be redesigned to incentivise long-term prevention and wellbeing outcomes, arguing that public finance processes must move beyond short-term crisis management towards investment in reducing future demand.
• DEMOS – explore the idea of a Preventative Departmental Expenditure Limit (PDEL) in their paper Revenue, capital, prevention: a new public spending framework for the future. This examines how public expenditure frameworks can better support prevention, highlighting the need to understand demand drivers, redirect spending upstream, and create incentives for long-term investment rather than reactive service delivery.
• Victorian Government, Australia – have produced the Early Intervention Investment Framework (EIIF), which Provides a structured approach for assessing the long-term social and fiscal benefits of early intervention, using evidence and forecasting to support investment decisions that prevent future service demand.
• The Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accounting published the original preventative investment methodology in 2025, which is the basis of the Scottish Government approach to preventative budgeting.
• The Welsh Future Generations Commissioner is also developing preventative budgeting methodologies in Wales, alongside a range of other work on prevention. This includes the launch of a Preventative Budget Mapping Tool expected in October 2026”.

Areas for future exploration

Scotland is already making progress in strengthening its approach to prevention investment through the development of preventative budgeting and a growing body of evidence and innovative practice across national and local partners. Building on these foundations, the Scottish Prevention Investment Framework will provide an infrastructure that supports strategic decision-making, enables investment to flow towards activities with the greatest potential impact, and strengthens the link between evidence, funding and outcomes.

As this Framework develops, there is a need to better understand how investment decisions can reflect the long-term value of prevention, particularly where benefits emerge over extended timescales, accrue across organisational boundaries, or are realised in different parts of the public sector from those making the initial investment. This includes exploring the Framework can support the identification, assessment and prioritisation of opportunities for preventative action.

Further work is also required to strengthen the technical infrastructure that underpins preventative investment. This includes improving understanding of the costs, benefits and distributional impacts of preventative interventions; developing approaches to forecasting future demand and quantifying avoided costs; enhancing data linkage and evaluation capabilities; and ensuring evidence is presented in ways that support practical decision-making. There is also scope to explore how analysis can better identify the people and places most likely to benefit from preventative investment, helping to target resources where they can have the greatest impact.

Alongside analytical development, there is a need to understand the organisational, financial and governance conditions that enable prevention to be embedded in decision-making. This includes exploring how leadership, accountability arrangements, funding models and collaboration across sectors can support a sustained shift towards upstream approaches. A key challenge will be understanding not only what works, but how preventative investment frameworks can be operationalised in practice and incorporated into routine planning, budgeting and investment decisions across the public sector.

Box 1 – Scottish Prevention Investment Framework

The Scottish Prevention Investment Framework was announced in the Programme for Government 2026-2031 and will provide a Scotland-wide approach to strengthening investment in prevention and early intervention.

The Framework will establish an end-to-end approach to prevention investment, connecting funding, evidence, investment decisions, outcomes and learning within a single system. Building on Scotland's preventative budgeting work, it will support decision-makers to maximise the impact of existing preventative expenditure while enabling a greater shift towards upstream investment.

Underpinning the Framework will be a suite of tools, evidence and support mechanisms designed to strengthen prevention-focused decision-making. This is expected to include preventative budgeting, prevention investment assessments, avoided-cost modelling, outcome monitoring and proposition development support. Together, these elements will help improve understanding of the long-term benefits of prevention and provide a stronger evidence base for investment decisions.

The Framework will support a more strategic and coordinated approach to preventative investment, helping partners identify shared priorities, align resources, develop joint funding arrangements and channel investment towards interventions with the greatest potential to improve outcomes and reduce future demand.

Alongside supporting investment decisions, the Framework will help build the wider conditions for prevention by strengthening leadership, analytical capability and collaborative working across sectors. In doing so, it aims to embed prevention more fully within routine planning, budgeting and investment processes across Scotland.

Addressing these questions will help build a stronger foundation for prevention investment in Scotland and support a more systematic shift towards earlier intervention and improved long-term outcomes.

Shared research and policy questions

To support the development of thinking in the area of investing in prevention, we have established a set of shared research and policy questions set out in Figure 2.

Connecting on this area of shared interest

The key Scottish Government lead for this area of interest is the Prevention Unit, who will lead on the Scottish Prevention Investment Framework, working closely with colleagues across a range of policy areas including the Scottish Exchequer, Third Sector Unit, Social Economy, and other portfolios with an interest in prevention and Public Service Reform.

The development of the Scottish Prevention Investment Framework through the Public Service Reform Strategy's Prevention Pillar provides a significant opportunity to shape how preventative investment is identified, assessed and supported across Scotland. As the Framework evolves, there is considerable scope for collaboration with partners and researchers on the evidence, approaches and infrastructure needed to support more effective prevention investment.

Alongside work at the national level, the Prevention Unit is engaging with local authorities, NHS Boards and other partners to explore how the Framework can support local decision-making and collaborative investment in prevention. This creates opportunities to contribute evidence, learning and practical insights on how preventative investment can best be implemented and embedded across different settings and sectors.

Contact

For further information, or to share relevant research, evidence or insights relating to this area of interest, please contact PreventionUnit@gov.scot.